Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour and the occult gumshoe phenomenon gets
dissected by Ryan K. Lindsay; the life, death and career of the Maniac
Joe Spinell is exhumed by Addam Duke; 10,000 pages of Japanese horror
comics king Kazuo Umezu is injected into your brain by Cameron Ashley,
and the Nerd of Noir, Peter Dragovich, plans your evening viewing.

At first, Kalinda seemed like a great character on a great show. But over four years, her past, (referred to often) was still too murky and I began to lose interest. Strutting around only goes so far. And this year, with the addition of a sadistic husband, I dread seeing those black boots walk down the hall on THE GOOD WIFE. IN a TV show that manages to be lucid about other issues, why this enigma,

The supporting character problem is a potent one. If you don't develop them somewhat, there is not enough interaction on a TV show-or you lose all interest in them. JUSTIFIED has not done very well by Winona for instance. If you blinked last season you missed her. Marie got very little airtime on BREAKING BAD this year. And Betty Draper has pretty much signed off. (And what do these characters have in common?).

But not all supporting characters are equal. Large casts can't give equal time to all of its players. THE CLOSER never developed its supporting characters beyond the squad room and that was okay. (I do wish they had never introduced her parents however).

Now Kalinda's storyline is both underdeveloped and referred to too often. I have read several articles about this recently so I know my frustration with it is shared.

What supporting players should have been developed more on a TV show you like? Which ones less? Who is the best supporting character in TV history? If you watch THE GOOD WIFE, should they pull the plug on Kalinda's back story or do you still care?

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

We were a poor family. But every summer, for one week, we took a vacation at Ocean City, New Jersey. It was a family town, a place for people who wanted to spend time on a beach, to go to a modest amusement park at night, to go to a family restaurant.. No drinking, no gambling--the kind of place you could take your kids.

This is Ocean City, New Jersey today.There is no way, Ocean City, New Jersey, a half an hour south of Atlantic City is going to come back without help. Please donate to the New Jersey Food bank right here. Donate to the New York foodbank too.

Double Vision
is a story for reluctant boy readers, so when I tell people about the
book, they assume I have boys. Actually, I have two daughters. But when I
would go to my oldest's school for those open house type events, and
she would get the teacher's praise, there was always that boy in the
back of the classroom. Twinkle in his eye, a few friends in tow,
watching. Waiting to see what trouble he'd get into.

That's
the kid I wanted to write a book for. Because that boy is probably a
pain in the neck in the
classroom, probably doesn't like to read all that much, but has plenty
of skills. Just not the kind that will get you good grades in school.

Main character Linc Baker in Double Vision is
that kid. After he gets into deep trouble, he ends up taking the place
of a lookalike junior secret agent, goes to Paris, and uses those
trouble making skills for good use. The story is fast-paced, fun--the
kind of story that lets kids see that the class troublemaker could be a
hero.

I like the Linc Bakers of the world. I hope this book gets them reading.

This 1992 documentary, directed by Joe Berrlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, broke the mold of what came before it because---well, listen to the director above. Up until this movie, documentaries were expected to have a POV and this one did not.

Four brothers live together in a shack in central New York. And when I say together, the four of them slept in the same bed and always had. When one brother dies, another is arrested. The townspeople come to believe that Delbert has been railroaded into a confession by the big-city cops. Certainly, he is mentally diminished and probably did not understand issues like waiving his rights.

This film covers much of the trial, community meetings, even benefits the town held to raise money for Delbert's defense. You won't come away from this with any definite answer on why he was killed or by whom, but you will learn a lot about the people involved. It was a real knockout in 1992,

I am going with two: LOST IN THE CITY, Edward P. Jones and DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES, Alice Munro. Both were their first books and perhaps it is the old-fashioned writing style that pleases me. The authors write believing you have the time to read. Neither was in too much of a hurry to tell the story.
A lot of more recent short stories seem to dive into the water without poising on the board for a minute or two, giving it a little bounce before the plunge. Before I beat this metaphor to death, what are your favorite single-author short story collections.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

From Wikipedia, this is the plot of Shel Silverstein's THE GIVING TREE.

The Giving Tree is a tale about a relationship between a young
boy and a tree. The tree always provides the boy with what he wants:
branches on which to swing, shade in which to sit and apples to eat. As
the boy grows older, he requires more and more of the tree. The tree
loves the boy very much and gives him anything he asks for. In an
ultimate act of self-sacrifice, the tree lets the boy cut it down so the
boy can build a boat in which he can sail. The boy leaves the tree, now
a stump. Many years later, the boy, now an old man, returns, and the
tree sadly says: "I'm sorry, boy... but I have nothing left to give
you." But the boy replies: "I do not need much now, just a quiet place
to sit and rest." The tree then says, "Well, an old tree stump is a good
place for sitting and resting. Come, boy, sit down and rest." The boy
obliges and the tree is very happy.

Guest One at a dinner party said this story was a family favorite, handed down to the next generation as an example of selflessness. No story ever made more of an impression on her children. The book was a popular gift at baby showers and birthdays. Giving is the most important thing to learn.

Guest Two said, she hated this story. For her, the tree was a mother. A mother that was expected to give everything until she was all used up and completely spent. Shouldn't the child have seen this before the tree became a stump. Wasn't the tree's happiness a form of masochism?Or sadism on the part of the child?

Both of these women are giving, caring, lovely people. How can they differ so much? Is the tree a mother? Does the tree teach selflessness?

Celia
Fremlin's UNCLE PAUL, published in 1959, is a novel of psychological
suspense that takes place in a run-down seaside town at the tail end of
the 1950s in "Austerity Britain."The story involves two sisters, Meg and Isabel, and their older half-sister, Mildred.Many
years before, Mildred was briefly married to a charming bigamist (the
"Uncle Paul" of the title) who had attempted to murder his first wife
and would doubtless have done the same to Mildred if he hadn't been
identified and arrested.

It has been fifteen years since Paul went to prison.Mildred
has long been remarried to a wealthy man who provides for her
materially but leaves her feeling dissatisfied emotionally.She
fills her life with endless rounds of clothes shopping and hair
maintenance (one of Fremlin's wonderful touches is how she describes
Mildred's ever-changing wardrobe and hairstyles).Meg
and Isabel (who were just school girls when Paul was arrested) are now,
respectively, a single, working woman and a widowed mother of two young
children who has just recently remarried.Isabel and her family have
gone to the coast for a holiday and Mildred has joined them, renting a nearby cottage.But
when Mildred discovers that the cottage is the very one where she spent
her honeymoon with Paul, she is gripped by a strange fear that Paul is
on his way to claim her once more.Isabel,
a dithery woman, distracted by the demands of her family and easily
moved to tears, feels overwhelmed by Mildred's concerns and contacts
Meg, who reluctantly agrees to join her sisters to try to allay
Mildred's fears.

Meg
is perceived (by herself and by her siblings) as the sensible,
level-headed sister, and she arrives at the shabby little caravan where
Isabel and family are staying with every expectation of logically
dismantling Mildred's fears about the possibility of Paul's return.She
persuades Mildred take a room at the local down-at-heel hotel in town,
offering the stay at the cottage in her sister's place.Fremlin's
descriptions of the cottage (primitive, weed-choked, with no
electricity or running water) and Meg's attempt to explore it at
twilight with the aid of only a candle begin to ratchet up the tension.Yes, Meg is a woman
of common sense, but isn't there something lurking about outside (or is it inside) that cottage?Fremlin
does an excellent job of showing how even the most sensible among us
can easily fall prey to our imaginations when the environment is
conducive.

As
the story progresses, the action moves between the cottage, the
caravan, and the hotel, with the sisters, other family members, and
assorted minor characters in various combinations going back and forth
between the three locations.Fremlin's
writing of domestic details, conversations between adults and children,
and English class-consciousness are unsurpassed.The writing is economical--not a word is wasted--so read carefully for clues and foreshadowing!

The
suspense continues to build as some truly fightening events occur and
both Meg and Isabel begin to question if either of the men in their
lives could possibly be Paul.Isabel
knew her new husband, a former Army officer, only briefly before
marrying him; and Meg has known her new boyfriend, Freddy, for little
more than a month.Neither man seems to be Paul, but both the women discern vaguely-remembered elements of Paul in them.(It
is, incidently, a sign of how things have changed that Freddy's
patronizing attitude, admitted selfishness, and so-called witticisms at
the expense of others, notably Meg, could have been
considered charming just 50 years ago; now, we would recommend any
woman run a mile from such a "Peter Pan" character.)

A
good-hearted but talkative neighbor, a snake, a missing hat box, a deep
well, a fortune teller--all play their roles in the escalation of fear
and terror for the three women.To say much more about this tightly-plotted, satisfying book would be unfair.This and Celia Fremlin's other books are well worth seeking out.You will not be disappointed.

Ed Gorman is the author of two long running crime fiction series as well as countless anthologies, westerns, and assorted short stories. You can find him here.

Forgotten Books: The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller

Graham Greene spoiled me as far as thriller writers go. His thrillers
(or "entertainments" as he chose to call them) always worked on at least
three levels, the tension of the story itself and then the characters
and the milieu they inhabited.

Cardboard cut-outs of Washington and its people just don't do it for me,
whether CIA or FBI, the men too bold (though always with that One
Serious Flaw) and the women too beautiful (though always with that One
Serious Flaw). Thriller Writing 101.

Marcia Muller In her exciting new novel The Ever-Running Man shows us
how to write a thriller that honors the Greene method--tension-filled
story, with believeable characters in a carefully detailed milieu.

Private investigator Sharon McCone's husband is one of the owners of
RKI, a security company that competes with the best and the brightest in
the business. But RKI, home office and affiliates, has been set upon
with a domestic terrorist who uses explosive devices
with deadly cunning and precision. McCone, barely escaping such an
explosion, glimpses the man who means to make things ugly for the
company.

RKI hires McCone to see what she can find out. The search is intense, a
relentless hunt to discover and stop the killer before he wreaks any
more damage.

But in the course of the search McCone is forced to confront certain
truths about herself, her husband and his business partners. Muller
gives us the world as it is--the world of Starbucks, reading the Sunday paper, the inevitable misunderstandings in marriage--seamlessly
enhancing the chilling plot.

An A+ suspense novel.

SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER, Peter Dickinson (Patti Abbott)

This is the fourth of the six Detective James Peeble books, the most famous probably being the first THE GLASS SIDED ANTS' NEST or the second THE OLD ENGLISH PEEP SHOW.. I read this book in 1989 and most of the others too, enjoying Peeble and his world.
This book takes place largely in a hospital for children with a peculiar illness: cathypny. Children with this disorder (fictional surely) barely move, are very chubby, lethargic, but lovable. Peeble comes to the institution on other matters but is fascinated with the children. As are their caretakers seemingly. (I wonder how many mysteries take place in institutions like this. Let's name them sometime). A side effect of the disorder is the children are psychic and herein lies the rub. What will evil forces do to use the kids for their own ends. It is up to Peeble to save them.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

We saw this at Stratford Shakespeare Festival this summer. A nicely mounted production but not my favorite play by any means. The actor playing Henry played Lenny in THE HOMECOMING last season and oh, my I liked him better in that. He was transfixing in that play.

I have to admit Shakespeare's history plays leave me cold except for Richard III.Am I a philistine?

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

And let's give a lot of latitude here. I am going with STAR TREK, THE NEXT GENERATION although there are many close competitors (The X Files, Battleshop Galactica). I love TNG combination of adventure, character, great plots and heart. How about you?

I took a lot away from this show--one of the secrets of being an adult was knowing the ways of the flirtatious Bob Collins, a photographer who chased his models every week. Although I was 7-9 when this show aired, I remember it fairly well. Adored by his secretary,(Ann B. Davis) Bob was also joined in the cast by Rosemary DeCamp, as his sister, and Dwayne Hickman, as his nephew (who learned to chase girls too). The series was the first ever mid-season replacement and ran for about three years in the late fifties.But coming into it at a fairly advanced age, I think Bob Cummings soon seemed a bit old (for the networks at least) to be chasing models and they never were able to develop other story lines.BACHELOR FATHER was another show that mimed the girl-chasing theme, if a little less leeringly at around the same time. Apparently girl-chasing men were popular in the early days of TV.

Monday, October 22, 2012

George sent this piece from the WSJ, which was very enjoyable so I am posting the link.

I am not really talking about series like the Poirot novels--where he is essentially the same character and the same age throughout the books. But instead a series where the characters change over time. Where we get a peek at the changes occurring in the world outside them too.

In the non-crime fiction world, I would have to pick Updike's Rabbit books. I was eager to read each one as soon as it was published. And I think he did a great job in capturing each era. Runner-up Richard Ford's series about Ralph Bascombe, beginning with THE SPORTSWRITER and ending with THE LAY OF THE LAND.

In the crime fiction world, I have two favorites-the four Kate Atkinson books about Jackson Brody and the Henning Mankell books about Kurt Wallender. There are many, many more I could have chosen, but I want to leave some for others.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Last week's NEW YORKER has a fabulous piece about the writer, Hilary Mantel, who just won the Booker for second time for her novel BRINGING UP THE BODIES, a sequel to the 2009 Bookered. WOLF HALL. Among the many interesting details of her life are several good ones about her writing process.

One of my favorites was this "Sit quietly and withdraw your attention from the room you are in until you're focused inside your mind. Imagine a chair and invite your character to come sit in it. Once he is comfortable, you may ask him questions."

The first time she tried this when she was writing a novel about a giant, the giant came in but before sitting down, he tested the chair to see if it would take his weight.From then on, she knew this technique would work for her and it has.

Have you ever tried such a technique, writers? What do you do to get inside the head of a stubborn character?.

I am thinking Ray Bradbury for our next author. Perhaps on December 7th. Maybe some people can do a short story or two in lieu of a novel. Or a work of non-fiction or a critical look at him. What do you think?

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series of political thrillers and the Sam McCain series. You can find him right here.

Having Wonderful Crime

I just finished reading Craig Rice's 1944 novel Having Wonderful Crime.
Rice is, of course, the grand dame of mystery mixed with screwball
comedy. I hadn't read the novel in thirty years so I came to it fresh.
And I was surprised.

Yes, it's larky in its plotting, and as usual smart-ass in its dialogue but there are moments that are serious and amazing.

As an alcoholic, I became all too familiar with blackouts and hangovers
that kept me in bed for two and three days. Rice opens the book with a
long scene involving a man who lacks the strength to get out of bed. He
is beseiged by the furies and terrified of what he might have done. This
is one of the most powerful morning-after scenes I've ever read. I
think most alcoholics would agree with me. And Rice, a terrible
alcoholic herself, knew what she was writing about first hand.

Then there's part of a scene in which Rice (using interior monologue)
assess a room full of glamorous people and their worth on the glitz
scale. Her observations are worthy of Tom Wolfe at his best and
nastiest.

This book makes a good case for what we call today the traditional
mystery. It's a pleasure to read as pure entertainment but there's a
also a wicked social voice relating the reality of this particular time
and this particular strata of society. Despite her reputation, I don't
think she's hardboiled. At least not in this book. She's just a very
good storyeller reporting back from the eyries of the wealthy and
privileged. And laughing up her silk sleeve.

Ghost, Alan Lightman (Patti Abbott)

I am reluctant to review a book I can't quite recommend but since I read it with this purpose in mind, here it is. Seemed like a good choice for this time of year. Those of you who like metaphysics might enjoy it however.
David is a man who is adrift in life, not as disastrously as Quell in THE MASTER, but similarly. He takes a job with a man even stranger than he who is a mortician. David shows an aptitude for dealing with the clients and is soon a fixture in the business. Then one day he makes the mistake of talking about a vapor he saw rising from a body. His explanation of what he saw is never more concrete (if vapor even can be) than this. A vapor with the suggestion of an intelligence is as far as he goes. He is immediately picked up by all sorts of crackpots and a paranormal society (gee, this really does evoke THE MASTER) and his divorced wife briefly returns, believing him to be more interesting than she had thought. Everyone thinks his experience has something to offer them, except David. He remains as enigmatic by the book's end as at its beginning.Maybe the vapor is a manifestation of David's personality.

A strange little book that is almost as difficult to explain as that puff of vapor. Lightman is also the author of EINSTEIN'S DREAMS, a much praised book

Thursday, October 18, 2012

We saw THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY at the Abbey Theater on September 29th. What a special place to see this scary work by Oscar Wilde. The young actor playing Dorian was in his first play and he was marvelous. Sweeping around like the narcissistic prig he was. The production never showed the painting. They used a huge frame with a blank background. At first, I found it jarring, but eventually it came to seem like a good decision. Horror is scarier imagined, I think.

For anyone who's interested, I have an interview at Tom Pluck's Belly Up to the Bar. It's because I am widely known for my drinking prowess.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

the best of luck with the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award in UK tomorrow night. She's going up against three heavy hitters: Robert Harris, Neal Stephenson, and Charles Cumming. Can a cheerleader triumph?

I heard the
murmurs in the hallway, the half-uttered statements at the water cooler.

“…corruption….”

“…election
fraud….”

“…retaliation….”

“…dirty
sheriff….”

Eleven years ago,
I moved to north central Illinois and got a job at the local newspaper.The Sheriff’s resignation and guilty pleas
had ended just a few months earlier so tongues still wagged with the white-hot
intensity of a blow torch.

Bah…yawner.

Because I grew up
in Texas, where we grow dirty sheriffs the size of skyscrapers, where corruption
is not just embedded in our DNA…it is
our DNA, where election fraud and retaliation ain’t nothing but another day.

A corrupt
sheriff?Boooorrring….

That entire story
was yesterday’s headlines, baby.Yeah, The New Yorker had done stories and the
AP had been all over it; the Chicago
Tribune had had reporters trolling north central Illinois for months and
the Illinois Attorney General had investigated everyone that sheriff had ever
talked to, ever arrested, ever slept with, ever even breathed on for crap’s sake.

In that one, a
young officer had tried to serve an arrest warrant on a two-bit bully in a tiny
town just outside’a Nowheresville.The
officer ended up dead and the murderer killed another couple in front of their
young daughter before blasting it out with cops in a shoot-out that left the
murderer with a bullet in his face but somehow alive.

With the
exception of trial, the mechanics of that story had played out, but I was
tracking down details.I had a friend
who’s fiancée was law enforcement.The
fiancée thought maybe, if I showed the right kind of interest, the cops
involved might talk to me.Not about the
shots and the deaths, but about the adrenaline, about the thoughts and pounding
hearts.About what it was like to taste
death.

So while my
newspaper colleagues were talking about the local sheriff, my interest was
miles and miles away.

Up until the
water cooler talk shifted.

“…what about the
broken gloves…?”

“…and the
letter….”

“…no way you can prove intent….”

“…doesn’t
matter…murder is murder….”

Whoa…hang
on.Murder is a whole different thang,
baby.

This
wasn’t the sheriff’s re-election campaign trying to raffle off a $12,000 Harley
Davidson but not selling enough tickets to pay for it so choosing a ‘winner’
who didn’t actually exist (and said winner’s name might have been…might have been…the name the dirty
sheriff used when he was undercover on the drug task force) before destroying
all the remaining tickets and most of the records.This wasn’t billing the county for more than
200 cell phone calls made from Illinois to his girlfriend in Texas (Lubbock, in
fact, where at the time the sheriff was calling her, I was attending Texas Tech
University…how is that for some fucked up synchronicity?).This wasn’t lying to a grand jury.

This
was murder; Cain and Abel stuff.

That caught my attention.

From
Estate of Sims v. County of Bureau (7th
Cir. #01-2884)

“In
1999 TMS suffered a fatal heart attack in her home in Tiskilwa, Illinois. The
only person present at the time was Bureau County Sheriff, whose alleged
campaign fraud was the subject of a story S was investigating for the local
newspaper.”

Not
the paper I worked for, but one in another county.And why was another county covering election
fraud rather than the local boys?Because the local boys were scared of retaliation…from the sheriff.

Then
again, so was she.

“She
had expressed concern to others that [the sheriff] might retaliate against her
for writing the story.” (7th
Cir.)

So
the sheriff types up a letter and takes it to the post office for bulk mailing
to the reporter’s entire hometown.That
letter accused the reporter’s husband of “…past and current felonious criminal
conduct.” (7th Cir.)

I
never knew exactly what bullshit the letter was slinging, but there were
rumors….

Whatever
it was, it was harsh enough and horrible enough to give the reporter a heart
attack.She was a big woman with a
well-known heart condition and when the family sued, they said the sheriff knew
the letter would give her a fatal heart attack.That part is bullshit.The
sheriff didn’t know what the reaction would be.Yeah, the odds played in his favor, but he didn’t know for sure.

“At
approximately 12:30 p.m., S did suffer a fatal heart attack. [The sheriff] radioed
for an ambulance at 12:47 p.m., but by the time the paramedics arrived at 12:54
p.m., S was not breathing and did not have a pulse.” (7th Cir.)

Now
let’s take a look at that right there.Heart attack at 12:30, he radioed for help at 12:47.Seventeen minutes, roughly, of watching her
gasp and wheeze and clutch her chest and arm.Did she beg for help?Was she even
able to talk?

Before
he radioed for help, he called the post office to ask about possible criminal
penalties for bulk-mailing defamatory letters and whether or not those letters
could be traced back to the person who mailed them.

Dude
was worried about the Feds sniffing around on his post office beef and while he
sorted that out, she lay at his feet fucking dying.

When
the inevitable investigation got rolling, when the questions came fast and
furious at this sheriff who suddenly found himself under siege, he told
everyone he’d wanted to save her by performing CPR…but his rubber gloves kept
breaking.

Not
that one broke and he didn’t have any others, but that they kept breaking.In other words, he replaced them and they
broke and he replaced them again and they broke…and again and again.

(As
a quick aside, I now work in law enforcement and I’ve got an entire box of
latex gloves in my squad car.Probably
200 gloves in that box.The thing
is?I’ve never broken a single glove.I’ve searched houses and cars, people and
even animals wearing bandannas and sweaters.Never broken a glove.)

So
this was the story, and not even all of the story, there are lots more
incidents that came to light during the investigation.But ultimately, in a deal with the Attorney
General’s office, the sheriff pleaded to felony campaign fraud.

Honestly, I’m not
sure causation could ever be proven between him and her fatal heart attack, but
circumstantially it was fairly straight up.

So the why a man
would – allegedly – go to these lengths to head off a story about low-rent campaign
fraud rolled around in my head for ten years.I never really thought about doing anything with it literarily, but I
did study on it from time to time.

Then along came
Ron Earl.Sent me an email saying,
roughly, write me a story or I’ll blow your balls off with a really small gun
so that it doesn’t actually kill you but takes you a while to bleed to death.

How can I turn
down an invite like that?

So I started a
story.And it blew.And I started another.And it blew worse.For whatever reason, I couldn’t write squat.

In frustration, I
decided to tell Ron Earl to eat my shorts.I couldn’t get anything working for him so he should move on.I put the project outta my head and kept
working on the new novel (Exit Blood,
available next March from Down and Out Books, if you can dig it!).

But while I
worked the novel, my brain percolated around the sheriff and the next damn
thing I knew, the story “A Good Son” was done.Obviously some of the details are different, but I did follow out the
rumors of what I’d heard was in the letter.

Other than the
sheriff showing a letter to a large woman and standing by while she died,
nothing in my story happened.

As far as you
know, anyway.And I won’t tell you any
different unless you buy really good whiskey…

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

This is a brilliant, thrilling film made by Kurosawa in 1963. An executive is poised to take over a company on the brink of financial disaster when his chaffeur's son is kidnapped by men who mistakenly believe it to be his son. The great Toshiro Mifune plays the executive. The train scene is one of the best ever.
This is based on an Ed McBain novel, KING'S RANSOM but Kurosawa and his writers have made some choices of their own. This is an exciting film about a moral dilemma. It was recently remastered.

Monday, October 15, 2012

In an article in the Guardian, Daphne Du Maurier is compared unfavorably to Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh and other writers. Her writing is called flabby, overwrought. She is judged to be a near equivalent to Barbara Cartland (no insult intended--I have never read Ms. Cartland).

Now when was the last time you heard anyone say they were reading Powell, I ask you. If a book continues to draw in readers 75 years later, can the writing really be sub-par?Mustn't it have some qualities that are to be admired? Some enduring positive traits?

REBECCA and MY COUSIN RACHEL astounded me once again when I read them a few years back. They have a power, a pull, that many other novels of that era did not. Some of DuMaurier short stories are brilliant too. (Don't Look Now, The Birds).

This becomes a tiresome argument, but what other writers have been consigned to second ratedom and continue to be read rather than just talked about in articles like this one?

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Saturday, October 13, 2012

More than sixty years after its publication, TKAM is still 500 on Amazon and of the more than 2500 reviews, the majority are 5 star. It is very rare for people to agree so completely about a book that most of us read as teenagers. I read it again a few years ago and liked it even more.

What other books are almost universally admired? What books are people most passionate about? What book never gets the cold shoulder?

I wrote "Hushed" this past February, after Thomas Pluck invited me to contribute to
the PROTECTORS anthology. The poem is narrated by an older cousin who is
jealous of a younger one until he sees bruises on the boy's arm.

It
was sparked by a years-old memory of seeing bruises on my own cousin's
arm. When I asked him how the bruises happened, he wouldn't tell me, and
he was very scared I might tell someone else. I had heard rumors his
father was abusive, but unless he admitted to the beating, no one would
believe me--especially since our relationship as children was
contentious.

My cousin and I are on good terms now. He's married,
has a good job, and owns his own home. If the rumors I still hear about
his father are true, I would have turned my back, but my cousin is more
compassionate, so his father remains an albatross.

I'm glad to
turn this bad experience into a poem that will go to protect children.
I'm also glad to tell you how my cousin is doing now. Thank you, Patti.

Gerald So

In Dreams was lifted from the MFA thesis I’m writing, a fictional memoir currently titled The 2nd Coming. It has been edited down and names have been removed. As best I can remember it, it is a true story. I never considered writing about this particular experience until I began writing the fictional memoir for school last semester. I had already changed my thesis twice after two semesters. Although
I had tried many times to write about some of the more painful issues
from my past, especially in theatre form, I could never sustain anything
long enough to feel comfortable continuing. After reading Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney, I tried second person and found I could finish what I had started. It remains a work in progress, but much more developed with each passing opportunity to settle in and write. I’ve
already gone beyond the word count requirements for my thesis, but why
let that stop me (said the SOB arrogant enough to title a memoir,
fictional or otherwise, The 2nd Coming)? It
is nothing profound, that’s for sure, but there’s a nuthouse stay and
some unfortunate family dynamics that are sometimes sad and often funny. The fictional memoir will cover birth to a first wedding at the age of twenty-one, with occasional projections into the future. It
touches on the influence of religion in a somewhat irreverent family,
growing up in the racial hotbed Canarsie was during the late 60’s/early
70’s, a Mob influence within family, and ultimately the collapse of
family. And, yes, the current title is as ironic as it reads.

About Me

Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of two print novels CONCRETE ANGEL (2015) and SHOT IN DETROIT (2016)(Polis Books). CONCRETE ANGEL was nominated for an Anthony and Macavity Award in 2016. SHOT IN DETROIT was nominated for an Edgar Award and an Anthony Award in 2017. A collection of her stories I BRING SORROW AND OTHER STORIES OF TRANSGRESSION will appear in 2018.